Monday 1 October 2012 07.18 EDT
First published on Monday 1 October 2012 07.18 EDT

Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett are making a jazz album together. The pop star and the crooner are reportedly set to collaborate on a big-band full length album, singing songs by a "very underrated, very famous" jazz songwriter.

"Of all things, she called me from New Zealand and said, 'I want to do a jazz album with you,'" Bennett revealed in a new interview with Rolling Stone. "And I said, 'You got it!'"

Gaga and Bennett previously collaborated on a version of the Rodgers and Hart song The Lady is a Tramp, released last year. But now, Bennett said, they want to do a full LP "as soon as [they] can", working with arranger Marion Evans and "a big swing band". The plan is to record songs by an as-yet unrevealed composer: someone "not as famous as Gershwin or Porter ... but he did as many hit songs as anybody". "I can't mention the composer because I don't want anybody to do it before we do it," Bennett admitted.

Bennett, who is 86, said that he calls Lady Gaga "the musical Picasso". "Every day she changes, she has so many ideas and carries them out," he marvelled. "[And] a lot of people don't know it, but she's a phenomenal jazz singer."